BlockShopper bullied into settling over Web links

Faced with the potential of crippling legal fees and an unsympathetic judge, …

A tiny startup that was threatened by a massive law firm over nothing more than a humble hyperlink has been forced to settle and change its linking policies, handing Goliath the win in this gratuitous trademark case. Under the agreement, real estate startup BlockShopper can no longer include hyperlinks anywhere on its website to Jones Day, a massive Chicago law firm, except explicitly on URL text. Essentially, jonesday.com is okay, but not blah blah blah.

During the summer of 2008, BlockShopper linked to the Web profile of a prominent real estate lawyer in a posting that highlighted his purchase of a condo, and noted that Jones Day had purchased homes/condos/apartments on Chicago's North Side. The information on these sales is public record, and BlockShopper did nothing more than follow standard Web linking procedure that practically every website on earth follows. For reasons still unbeknownst to the world, however, Jones Day was very displeased by these links and filed a lawsuit against BlockShopper in September of 2008, leveling the odd charge of trademark dilution.

The complaint cites the issue as "confusion"—the claim was that people visiting BlockShopper and seeing the links in question might assume that it was somehow officially related to Jones Day. This, of course, was a ridiculous claim, but BlockShopper tried to play nice and consented to a temporary restraining order that required the site to remove the links. Soon thereafter, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Citizen jointly filed an amici curiae brief on behalf of BlockShopper, pointing out the obvious: "linking is what web sites do—that is, after all, why it is called the 'World Wide Web'."

Unfortunately, the judge in the case refused to even look at the brief after Jones Day said the brief sided with one party (as most amicus briefs do); he also refused to dismiss the case at the request of BlockShopper. According to TechDirt, the judge even allegedly put pressure on BlockShopper to back down by saying, "Do you know, young man, how much money it's going to cost you to defend yourselves against Jones Day?"

BlockShopper did, in fact, realize how much money it would cost. Faced with crippling legal fees and an unsympathetic judge, the company was forced to settle the case out of court by agreeing not to use embedded links to Jones Day on any words or names. If BlockShopper wants to link to a specific attorney's profile at Jones Day's website, BlockShopper must state that the person in question is employed by Jones Day along with the text "more information about [so-and-so] can be obtained at Jones Day's website at www.jonesday.com/[remainder of URL here]" with a link encompassing only the URL. If you ask us, this almost sounds more like a bad Internet marketing scheme than a lawsuit settlement.

As pointed out by Slate, the conclusion of this lawsuit doesn't seem to solve any of Jones Day's alleged trademark concerns, and doesn't even prohibit the posting of attorneys' home purchases (presumably the information that Jones Day didn't like in the first place). The links still exist, just in a somewhat different, slightly awkward structure that is not clearly better than the original. In essence, Jones Day won by simply bullying BlockShopper until it was forced to give in and craft its links in the way that the law firm would prefer.

Turning the Web into a permissions-based linking system would be, at worst, catastrophic, and at best, annoying. We can only hope that future cases like this one will have outcomes that make more sense.

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27 Reader Comments

Fortunately settlement agreements have no bearing on future cases and given this judge's obviously difficult comments it's better no law be made than bad law. Still, seems like an ideal opportunity for the typical pranks that go on with blogs and links in the future.

According to TechDirt, the judge even allegedly put pressure on BlockShopper to back down by saying, "Do you know, young man, how much money it's going to cost you to defend yourselves against Jones Day?"

Cause the judge went from being a dick to being need of being thrown from the bench.

Sounds like Chicago politics (I lived there). I'd speculate that Jones Day had a personal relationship with the Judge. IMNAL, but like most readers, this sounds ridiculous. Someone overseas needs to create a tribute to this law firm -- Immortalize, and let BlockShopper link to it...

It sounds like what is needed is for some large, well-heeled company who enjoys a good fight needs to start putting Jones Day links in a number of places that would be very annoying to Jones Day to entice Jones Day to file suit just to set a decent precedent...

Forced settlements like this are not the way things should work, though they too often are.

Everyone on teh internets is totally childish to call this guy a litigous douchebag. Sure, this lawsuit is lame, but can't we be civil instead of calling someone a litigous douchebag? And doing SEO on the term litigous douchebag for the guy's website... don't you people have anything better to do?

what if everyone who frequents ars sets up a free blog and links to jonesday just like the original blockshopper did....they'd have to file thousands of suits. i say make em spend the money...rat bastards

++The EFF has lawyers, don't they? Why couldn't they have one of them represent block shopper pro bono?

The EFF's lawyers only have so much time and money to spend, and they appear to be quite busy with their projects. I suspect that they looked at this case, filed the Curae, and decided that doing more wasn't worth the effort, given the details of the case.

That's all speculation on my part, but that's what you get for free on the internet.

"Do you know, young man, how much money it's going to cost you to defend yourselves against Jones Day?"

For goodness sake. How naive can you be? The judge was obviously soliciting a bribe. The correct response would be to turn the conversation to the cost of living, perhaps owning a boat, or what one might lose gambling at a vacation in Las Vegas in order to get an approximate number. I tend to say something like, "Quite a bit, and I just dropped $5,000 in Vegas. I'll have to consult with my partners."

Jones Day is the most deserving of mass harassment by the Internet community I've seen in YEARS! Let's start with my new e-mail address. jones.day.can.kiss(at)my-anus.com Yes, it is real. If I had the time I would have a site at my-anus.com with 1,000's of links to Jones Day, and I would call them every day to remind them of it.

Strange justice! Seems like this judge's idea of providing justice is by asking the defendents to not even think of trying to defend themselves because it is going to be too costly!

Instead of making every effort to make the justice simpler, faster and ideally cheap, he is actually coercing them to not pursue it by threatening them with the high costs that his court is going to cost him.

Coming to think of it, I am not too shocked though. After a prior incdent as well as reading so much about it, I have formed this opinion that justice system in USA, just like the health system, is screwed up anyway. It is so expensive that it is out of reach of ordinary folks. (Where as you would think that justice being such a corner stone of a healthy civilization, it ought to be just free - period!).

I had one incident in court with a traffic citation and I was just shocked to experience the way she handled the case. Right at the start, she simply gave me an option to pay a reduced amount and consider myself lucky; or be forwarned that I would not be able to convince her if I tried to defend it. Realizing that she had already made up her mind about the case without even giving me a chance to speak, I, ofcrouse, ended up paying the reduced amount and considered myself 'lucky'!

According to the complaint, the folks at Jones Day contacted Blockshopper on two separate occasions asking them to stop uses the Jones Day link. On both occasions, their request and correspondence went unanswered. Seems like Jones Day was forced to sue because Blockshopper didn't want to deal with the issues. Blockshopper probably thought big old Jones Day don't have time to deal with little old Blockshopper.

And now to turn around and cry foul play and blame the Judge? The lawsuit would have never occurred if Blockshopper took care of their business.

According to the complaint, the folks at Jones Day contacted Blockshopper on two separate occasions asking them to stop uses the Jones Day link. On both occasions, their request and correspondence went unanswered. Seems like Jones Day was forced to sue because Blockshopper didn't want to deal with the issues. Blockshopper probably thought big old Jones Day don't have time to deal with little old Blockshopper.

And now to turn around and cry foul play and blame the Judge? The lawsuit would have never occurred if Blockshopper took care of their business.

Erm, how is including a hyperlink to Jones Day diluting their service mark? I looked at their complaint, but without being able to see Exhibits C and D, all I've got to go on is their claim that Blockshopper linked to the Jones Day website, had two photographs from that site on their site (presumably the photos of the individuals involved in the real-estate transaction), and mentioned Jones Day on their site.

I guess that it's remotely possible that these practices might confuse people as to whether or not Jones Day is involved in BlockShopper's activities...if Blockshopper went out of their way to do that, but again I can't see their exhibits. OTOH, just linking to a site, mentioning the firm, and even showing two pictures from the site does not obviously indicate service mark dilution to me.

Blockshopper was apparently convinced, in part by the Judge's statements, to settle rather than go ahead with their case. If that's not bullying ('we're a big law firm, and we don't like what you're doing. We can use the legal system to bankrupt you if you don't do what we want') I'm not sure what it is. The judge may have been motivated by a desire to keep this suit out of his courtroom (by laziness or disgust or any other reason) but by choosing to encourage Blockshopper to settle on the basis of cost of all things, is to encourage people to think that justice is for the rich.